NCS considers reducing football playoff brackets this season

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Freedom High football coach Kevin Hartwig talks to is team during a timeout in the second quarter of their football game against Pittsburg High in Oakley, Calif., on Friday, Oct. 6, 2017. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)

SAN RAMON — The North Coast Section will hold a special executive committee meeting Friday to discuss cutting its 16-team football playoff divisions in half, clearing the path for games canceled last weekend because of the North Bay wildfires to be played Nov. 9-11.

Antioch canceled its game against Freedom last Friday because of poor air quality from the fires.

That decision figured to impact the NCS’s four-team Open Division. Clayton Valley Charter, which routed Antioch in September, needed a close result between Antioch and Freedom to state its case for the Open Division above Freedom.

If the Antioch-Freedom game is now played, Clayton Valley might gets its wish.

Eric Volta, president of the NCS executive committee, requested the special meeting, commissioner Gil Lemmon said, adding that Volta was specifically interested in reducing the size of the 16-team brackets to eight teams.

The vote Friday is just for this season but doesn’t mean there won’t be discussion about reducing the playoffs moving forward, Lemmon said.

“I want to have a full conversation about the brackets,” the commissioner added.

Clayton Valley, which had its game last Friday canceled against Concord, beat Stellar Prep that same night in a game that was arranged on four hours’ notice.

If the regular season is expanded, there was thought that Concord might ask to reschedule the Clayton Valley game, knowing that Clayton Valley could not do so because teams are limited to 10 regular-season games.

But Concord athletic director Megan Coddington said she would not make that request. Lemmon added that Clayton Valley is in no danger of having to forfeit the Concord game.

The meeting Friday will come eight days after the Central Coast Section held an emergency executive committee meeting to push its football playoffs back a week so that games canceled because of the fires could be played.

Darren Sabedra is a sports reporter and the high school sports editor, overseeing prep coverage throughout the Bay Area. He's been with the Bay Area News Group since the early 1990s and has covered many sports beats, including Stanford football and basketball, pro baseball and the NFL. He also has worked on the sports copy desk.